ChristineCreations

Pages

Saturday, March 17, 2018

I thought that with today being St. Patrick's day, and more than wearing green, shamrock shakes and beer, St. Patrick was a man who loved the Lord, and was so significant in the spritual life of Ireland, that today I’d show you a beautiful verse called the Priestly Blessing from the book of Numbers in the Bible. The Lord told Aaron to bless the people with these words. It’s one of my favourite passages of Scripture because of how beautiful it is to think the the Lord turns His face towards us and gives us peace. The stamp is from ODBD Bookmarks Scripture, and I’ve added some patterned paper leaves, using an old pad of Kiwi Kiss from SU. How I miss that vibrant green. The dies are some a friend gave to me when she got a double set. So kind!

I’ve added a couple of sparkly Nuvo Dots to tsome of the laves and paper to give them a bit o’ dew, and curled a few of the leaves for dimension.

Friday, March 16, 2018

I have something so cheerful for your Friday! Marcy has illustrated a new Colour Story Illustration for the month and it’s a gem! It’s called Cup of Columbine. There are two versions of the image with or without the baby robin and egg. So, one is more simplified, and this one I’ve used shows off the baby bird and that cute egg. I couldn’t resist playing with this one first. Marcy does birds so well!

I printed the image quite large so it would cover almost the entire card face, and also lightened the lines up just a little bit so the image was more gray than black. Marcy offers no-line versions of both the images, but I didn’t want to go quite that light, so I just made the black lines slightly more transparent in Word, decreasing it by about 30%.

Marcy thought this image would be a good opportunity to play with blues and purples so that’s what I did. I found a gorgeous columbine that is a bluey-purple and then one that’s a regular purple. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE Hosta, and the blue-green varieties are my favourite, so it was a joy to add that colour in there.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

We're in the middle of High School open house season in our home. Our youngest starts grade 10 next year and that means a new school for him. It's hard to believe our baby is that old. One of the high schools we visited last week had a horticulture department, an entire greenhouse of plants, and they handed out baby succulents to anyone who wanted one. Isn't that interesting for a high school? I now have a little baby sedem succulent that's so darn cute!

Sunday, March 11, 2018

A good friend of mine had a brand new baby girl last week. She is just so precious and tiny and velvety! My friend's firsborn was a boy, so now she has someone to be girly with too. One of the gifts I often get for friend’s babies is to get them Robeez shoes (they are my favourite). I found an adorable pair that is girly pink with gold hearts and gold bows on the backs. I paired the shoes with a cute little flowery hair bow, so now she’s set for showing off her girlyness. We’re so grateful for her little life.

To go along with the little gift I made a pretty in pink spring card using a cute set from SU called Everybunny. That little spring chick is so cute! I pulled out the prismacolor pencils for a change and gave her some soft colour, and tried to make her extra fluffy.

For the sentiment I used a set from PaperTrey Ink called Simple Sentiments. For fun I added some pink pom pom ribbon, some fun washi tape, and a heart veneer that I pressed into white craft ink. Cute cute cute!

Though I’ve seen more people using a clean and simple style of card design, I still love patterned paper and have a lot of it in my stash. I’m trying not to buy more paper and use what I have - though if I walk through a craft store it’s always what catches my eye, and I have to remind myself how much I have back at home.

Companies do such a good job of putting paper collections together, but some designs go better together than others. On a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 card you really have a small space to work with and some patterns are too big in scale for that size of card.

Scale is the size of pattern on your pages. I’ll be honest and say, sometimes I get this to work better than other times! When combining a lot of patterned paper, it’s good to pay attention to the different sizes of pattern you use and to vary the scale, along with varying your colours.

In this design, I have four different patterns of paper going on. That’s actually a lot, so why does it work? On this card, the patterned numbers are the largest scale of pattern on the card. I used that in the largest space - the background of the card. This way it doesn’t overwhelm the design, and you see lots of it. The numbers work well for a birthday themed card too. It also sets the palette for the card design because it uses the most colours. I’ll take those colours and incorporate them on the rest of the card in smaller quantities, which results in a pulled together design.

The next three patterns are of a much smaller scale (tiny stars, medium sized diamonds, and mini gingham), and vary in colour.

I add these patterns in smaller amounts (I’ve heard it described like gallon, quart, cup - or for us in Canada - 4 L, 1 L, 250 ml...or something like that!). The green works nicely as a larger panel and anchors the coloured image. Because of the subtleness of the pattern on the green - it almost works like a solid colour. Next, because I didn’t want the bright yellow to take over the design (it’s such a strong colour), I used it in smaller bits, and then the little gingham pattern works for the tiny stars. The pattern, scale and colour is all used in proportion and you get a cute kid card out of it!

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Are any of you quilters? I have made a couple of quilts for friend’s babies and my kids, but really simple ones, not the really beautiful style of quilt that pieces into beautiful patterns or does fancy quilting on top. The paper variety is always easier for me. Today we have a paper quilt for baby. The image is another old one from There She Goes called Cattitude. As soon as I saw those little building blocks with the cats, my mind thought about the building block style of quilt. I’ll be honest and say I made this card a LONG time ago, but I forgot to post it. When I was saving a photo the other day from the last There She Goes card I made I found it again, so - bonus! Hopefully you’re ok with the inspiration - even if you can’t buy the sets any longer.

To create the feeling of a quilt, I cut out a variety of squares in different patterns of paper so that it would fit on a standard size card and still have some borders between the squares. Once they were adhered to the green panel, I ran it through my Big Shot using a lattice embossing folder. You can use any folder that makes it look like you quilted all the squares. The effect is so easy and cute!

I have some sewing themed accents including some paper buttons, and a sweet sentiment from an old SU set.

About Me

I love to colour, create and capture those little bits of beauty in my world, it is part of who God has made me to be. What I share here with you is an expression of who I am and it has given me opportunities I would have never dreamed of, which I am so grateful for.
In the rest of my life, I am a wife of 23 years to an amazing man who loves me for me, and Mom to three children; one in Junior High school, one who just completed High School, and one in University.
So blessed to share part of the journey with you.

While I have been compensated by these companies, I maintain the freedom as an independent designer to say what I truly think of their products. I will not recommend something that I don't personally use and enjoy.